This commentary is by Christopher Helali, a resident of Vershire who is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at Tongji University and a candidate in the master’s degree in liberal studies program at Dartmouth College. He is international secretary for the Central Committee of the Party of Communists USA. He is a former U.S. Army officer.
In 2020, I ran as a Communist to represent Vermont in the U.S. House of Representatives. It was the first time Communist was listed on a ballot in the United States in nearly 30 years.
We ran a strong campaign, focusing on war, imperialism and working-class issues. We garnered 3,432 votes. or 1%.
Under the slogan “End the Wars: Vote Communist,” I highlighted the conflict in Donbass and how U.S.-EU-NATO imperialism was bringing the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Even our campaign poster, featured in Seven Days, had Ukraine written above a bomb draped with the U.S. flag.
I was the only candidate nationwide who spoke openly about recognizing the independence of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republic in 2020. I even confronted then-presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard on the issue of arming Ukrainian neo-Nazis in January 2020 at Dartmouth College. She supported providing “defensive” weaponry to Ukraine.
My campaign website highlighted the threat posed by U.S. imperialism to world peace. NATO is the military wing of U.S. and European Union imperialism, which has wreaked chaos and destruction throughout the world, killing millions of people in the quest for global hegemony, resources, and violently remaking the world in the liberal West’s image.
Democrats and Republicans, liberals and neoconservatives are united in their aims to carry out regime change, “humanitarian interventions,” and NATO expansion to control the world’s resources and challenge nations that stand up to U.S. hegemony.
The post-1991 Pax Americana was the pinnacle of U.S. hubris and triumphalism. The proclamation of the “end of history” was the doctrine of those euphoric days for the West.
How quickly have Americans forgotten the bloodshed caused by the U.S.-NATO intervention in Yugoslavia, leading to the dismemberment and balkanization of that country in the 1990s. The U.S.-EU-NATO created Kosovo, a protectorate home to Camp Bondsteel, the largest U.S. military base in the Balkans.
The U.S. and NATO ruthlessly bombed Belgrade and Serbian territory and even “mistakenly” bombing the Chinese embassy, resulting in three deaths. The Chinese government called the bombing a “barbaric act.” NATO bombings massacred civilians, targeted civilian infrastructure, and even used depleted radioactive materials, poisoning the people, land and water.
The U.S. and NATO didn’t stop in Europe. They ventured far beyond Europe and the North Atlantic, unleashing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Somalia, and conducting special operations across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Millions were killed. Millions more were displaced, only to be met with fences and brutality by the same U.S.-EU-NATO states that unleashed the barbaric violence which displaced them in the first place.
To understand the Russia military operation in Ukraine, one must understand history. We could start at the Kievan Rus or the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji in 1774 that ended the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-74, where the Ottoman Empire ceded the Crimean Khanate, paving the way for the critically important Russian warm-water naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea.
We could talk about Lenin, the Soviet Union, and the creation of the Ukrainian SSR. However, the history that is most important is what happened in World War II in Ukraine.
The infamous man at the center of that history is Stepan Bandera, the fascist leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in World War II, who were responsible — along with their allies in the Nazi Wehrmacht and SS — in the murder of 200,000 Ukrainian Jews from 1941 to 1945.
The post-2014 Ukrainian government has taken down the statues of Lenin and Soviet war heroes and replaced them with statues of Bandera and other fascist Ukrainian heroes. In an act condemned by many, the government of Ukraine posthumously awarded Bandera the highest title of “Hero of Ukraine” and passed a law making it illegal to deny his “heroism.”
Moreover, neo-Nazi and fascist militias emerged during the 2014 coup, notably Right Sector and the Azov Battalion, which were incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces and supplied by the U.S., Israel, and other Western nations.
This historical revisionism and rehabilitation of fascists is a major grievance for Russia. The USSR lost over 27 million people in the fight against fascism during the Great Patriotic War. This history is not forgotten but part of the ongoing lived experience of the peoples of the former USSR.
Additionally, as the Warsaw Pact was crumbling and the socialist states of Eastern Europe were experiencing domestic turmoil, Western leaders and diplomats, including Secretary of State James Baker, promised Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev and later Russian President Yeltsin that NATO would not expand “one inch east.” They lied.
NATO expanded multiple times, threatening the national security of Russia. When Cuba as a sovereign nation invited the Soviet military and their nuclear weapons, the U.S. almost brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Yet, Russia’s security concerns have been dismissed for 30 years. The hypocrisy is glaring.
The gangsters of empire have brought the world once more to the brink. The bipartisan commitment to full spectrum dominance is paving the way to nuclear confrontation. The U.S.-EU-NATO axis must be stopped. NATO must be abolished if Europe is to have peace in our times.
